"Thus the belief in an unchanging order, the belief in _law_, is a belief of which the primitive man is absolutely incapable.... Experiences such as he receives furnish but few data for the conception of uniformity, whether as displayed in things or in relations.... The daily {252} impressions which the savage gets yield the notion very imperfectly, and in but few cases. Of all the objects around,--trees, stones, hills, pieces of water, clouds, and so forth,--most differ widely, ... and few approach complete likeness so nearly as to make discrimination difficult. Even between animals of the same species it rarely happens that, whether alive or dead, they are presented in just the same attitudes.... It is only along with a gradual development of the arts ... that there come frequent experiences of perfectly straight lines admitting of complete apposition, bringing the perceptions of equality and inequality. Still more devoid is savage life of the experiences which generate the conception of the uniformity of succession. The sequences observed from hour to hour and day to day seem anything but uniform, difference is a far more conspicuous trait among them.... So that if we contemplate primitive human life as a whole, we see that multiformity of sequence, rather than uniformity, is the notion which it tends to generate.... Only as fast as the practice of the arts develops the idea of measure can the consciousness of uniformity become clear.... Those conditions furnished by advancing civilization which make possible the notion of uniformity simultaneously make possible the notion of _exactness_.... Hence the primitive man has little experience which cultivates the consciousness of what we call _truth_. How closely allied this is to the consciousness which the practice of the arts cultivates is implied even in language. We speak of a true surface as well as a true statement. Exactness describes perfection in a mechanical fit, as well as perfect agreement between the results of calculations." The whole burden of Mr. Spencer's book is to show the fatal way in which the mind, supposed passive, is moulded by its experiences of 'outer {253} relations.' In this chapter the yard-stick, the balance, the chronometer, and other machines and instruments come to figure among the 'relations' external to the mind. Surely they are so, after they have been manufactured; but only because of the preservative power of the social environment. Originally all these things and all other institutions were flashes of genius in an individual head, of which the outer environment showed no sign. Adopted by the race and become its heritage, they then supply instigations to new geniuses whom they environ to make new inventions and discoveries; and so the ball of progress rolls. But take out the geniuses, or alter their idiosyncrasies, and what increasing uniformities will the environment show? We defy Mr. Spencer or any one else to reply.